I have been using Constant Contact for the last year to publish and I am quite happy. I would like to increase my click through rate though on some of my ads. First of all what do any of you think of services like CC. Secondly, what ideas do you have for increasing my rate of click throughs because they are nice ads.

I have some pretty strong opinions about CC (as you may or may not know I run a competitive company at http://EZezine.com.)

My strongest thoughts on them is that they are not discerning enough about who they let use their service, or the nature of the databases that they allow to be imported. This has caused them to be blacklisted with many of the major spam reporting agencies, resulting in less than wonderful deliverability. It is always a good idea to check your ezine hosting company or potential service provider in the spam database lookup at http://dnsstuff.com.

I'll leave it at that.

For your second question: increasing your CTR..."Nice ads" isn't enough to go on here. There are so many factors that contribute to CTRs.1) How large is your list?2) How was it built/aquired?3) What's your open rate?4) What's your delivery rate?5) How targeted is your list?6) How relevant are your "nice ads" to the demographics of your list?7) How "clean" is your list?8) What is your relationship with your list? Do they know you? Do they know that the mailing is from you?

No need to answer all of these, but I hope you see what I'm getting at. There's a ton of factors that come into play to determine CTR.

I'd like to add that additionally, you need to write a compelling Ad to increase your results. A good title, call to action, arousing curiosity, etc. are all essential to succeeding.

As a suggestion, why don't you post one of your ads and allow us to take a look at it. Whether your ad needs improving or not can be evaluated, thus eliminating one of the potential problems.

Additionally, are you split testing your ads? If you advertise with Google Adwords, for example, they will rotate your different ads to measure and compare your click through rate for each ad. The cost starts at a nickle per click depending on the competition.

I've been using Constant Contact for 5 months and am thrilled with the results. I get rave reviews on my e-zine, "A New Wrinkle(sm)" and can track where my readers are going (e.g. what interests them). I have a higher-than-average click-thru rate and I attribute it to providing links to sites and pages that will serve my target audience. Sometimes I'm surprised, but as folks have come to respect my opinions in my field as regards fashion and "Alternative Shopping" (e.g. "How to Dress Like a Million for a Buck, Three-Eighty!"), they seem ready to check out places I've tagged. When Katrina hit, I included a hotlink to Give.org to assist people who didn't know which groups best met their inclinations to target their contributions and the response was outstanding. I might place a link that leads folks back to my site if one of the articles in the ezine isn't connecting them there, but often will link to other sites - thus, folks realize that I am there to provide a service - sometimes one I can fulfill directly and sometimes referring them to others. I am planning on doing this more frequently for those who have developed a reciprical link for me on their websites, as I have them on mine.

Hope that helps! Visit me at: www.theclosetcoach.com and go to the Newsletter page - you'll see past issues archived and you can check out how I am using CC.